On this day 122 years ago (1888), in Ylistaro, Finland, my little grandma entered this world as the second of five children born to Sanna Viitikko and Jacob Alakosaari (at some point the family dropped the use of Alako and used only Saari, which means island).

Eliisa Saari is how Grandma’s name is written in an old Finnish family Bible. She was recorded as Elizabeth Elaine Saari once she came to the United States, but everybody called her Lizzie.

When Sanna married Jacob, her parents gave her a wedding gift of 1,000 markka with which they bought a farm near Ylistaro. Grandma remembers being only a girl of three along with her five-year-old sister, Sanna, herding cows for their mother.

Jacob left Finland to find work in America when Lizzie was 2½. Sanna remained on the farm with two young daughters and pregnant with son Jacob. For nine years she waited for her husband to make his fortune and send for them. The story is told in different ways, but it seems the bottom line is that she finally got tired of waiting, sold the family farm, and held an auction to buy tickets for passage to America.

They set sail in 1899 when Grandma was 11, sailing from Finland to England on a commercial “butter boat.” Grandma recounted how some people suffered for lack of food, but her mother had planned ahead and packed food for her family. Rough seas caused much sickness; and rather than clean, the sailors threw sawdust on the floor and the stench was terrible.

In England they boarded a passenger ship, a “nice boat with white table cloths on all the tables” as Grandma remembered. Again there were rough seas, causing delay because the captain feared they would run into icebergs.

After landing in Quebec, Canada, they took the Canadian Pacific Railroad bound for Virginia, Minnesota, where Sanna had last heard her husband was working. Word of their impending arrival reached Jacob who was now working in the mine at McKinley; so he had to leave work to intercept the train in McKinley before his family rode on to Virginia. Grandma recalled saying, “That looks like my father, but would he come in his work clothes to meet us?”

Grandma went to school in McKinley and Eveleth, but formal schooling ended at 14 and a succession of jobs commenced. She barely escaped when fire destroyed a hotel she worked at in McKinley. A laundry job in Eveleth was too strenuous, and she had difficulty keeping up. Her sister knew of a Jewish family looking for help, and Grandma worked for them until they asked if she would go to Nashwauk to work for their daughter, and she was there for about two years.

She had to go to the well in Nashwauk to fetch water. One day a tall young man came up to less-than-five-foot Lizze and said, “I will carry that for you.”

And that was the beginning of events I am writing about over 100 years later.

I know that you, God, are on the side of victims, that you care for the rights of the poor. And I know that the righteous personally thank you, that good people are secure in your presence. Psalm 140:12